bookchickdi: Sally Field

Showing posts with label Sally Field. Show all posts

Friday, May 29, 2020

Friday 5ive- May 28, 2020

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention this week. Monday was Memorial Day, and although we couldn't have big family celebrations, I hope you were able to grill out some hamburgers and hot dogs and maybe catch a viewing of Saving Private Ryan on TV.

1) While out walking my son and his girlfriend's dog Otto, I found this small monument in Pelham Manor, a tribute to the men who fought in the Battle of Pelham in the Revolutionary War.

2) Last week we celebrated a belated Mother's Day, and this past weekend we celebrated a belated St. Patrick's Day. I always made a big St. Patrick's Day dinner when the boys were growing up, and my oldest son says it is his favorite meal of the year. I made the traditional corned beef and cabbage with carrots, Irish champ mashed potatoes, pistachio bread, and Irish bread pudding. It turned out really well, and we all enjoyed it.

Corned beef, cabbage and carrots

3) With no Broadway (and who knows when it will come back), I have been watching performances online. Last week, Sally Field and Bryan Cranston performed A.R. Gurney's Love Letters as a fundraiser for The Actors Fund. The show is about an artist, Melissa (played by Sally Field), and a politician, Andrew (played by Bryan Cranston), and the letters they exchanged over 50 years. It was so moving, Sally Field was just phenomenal, and Bryan Cranston is great in everything he does. It makes me wish I could have seen Sally Field on Broadway when she was in The Glass Menagerie.

4) Speaking of fundraisers, John Oliver, host of HBO's Last Week Tonight started a fundraiser for the United States Post Office. The USPS has been having financial problems for awhile, and the pandemic has made it even worse. People depend on the USPS for many things, including absentee ballots and medications, and if you are a fan of Oliver's show or you get mail, you can buy the stamps here. I've met Mr. Nutterbutter a few times, so he is my favorite stamp. If you have a birthday coming up, look for Mr. Nutterbutter in the top right corner on a card from me.

5) I read two books last week. Kimberly McCreight's psychological thriller A Good Marriage begins with Amanda being brutally murdered in her home. Her husband Zach is arrested for her murder and he reaches out to Lizzie, a woman he briefly dated years ago to represent him. Lizzie is not a criminal defense lawyer, but Zach convinces her to help him. Lizzie has her own marital problems, with an alcoholic husband she doesn't trust. Amanda was murdered following an annual neighborhood party where men and women pair up with people not their spouses for sexual encounters. Did this have anything to do with her death? It's a twisty story, going back and forth between the days leading up to Amanda's death, the grand jury investigation, and Lizzie's own investigation. No one is exactly who you think they are, and there are plenty of secrets, suspects and red herrings here. I did find one plot twist a little too much to take, but fans of the Lifetime Channel movies will want to read this one.

Now is a great time to read Mary Kay Andrews' Hello, Summer. When the news agency where Conley has just landed a job goes out of business, she heads home to the small Florida Panhandle town of Silver Bay where her sister Grayson is the publisher/managing editor of the local newpaper that has been in their family for years. Times are tough for print newspapers, and Grayson may have to sell the family business. When Conley witnesses a car accident where the local Congressman is killed, she digs deep into what really happened, and ends up "digging up dirt" and angering many in the tight-knit community. There's romance, small town life, and if, like me, you grew up wanting to be Brenda Starr, Hello, Summer is a perfect novel to read at the beach or on your front porch.

I hope you all stay safe and healthy.

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Two of Fall's Best Books

Reprinted from the Citizen:

Fall is a big season for publishers, one in which books with high hopes for success hit the shelves. Two books that fit that category are by a well-respected author of fiction, essays and nonfiction, and a debut author whose name is well-known to anyone who has followed television and movies for the last 40 years.

The debut author is actress Sally Field, who took seven years to write her memoir In Pieces.

Field grew up in a decidedly female household with her mother, grandmother and great-aunts, all strong women. She tells some of their fascinating stories, explaining how they got to be where they were. It will inspire the reader to talk to their own mothers and grandmothers about their life experiences.

The biggest influence on Field’s life was her beautiful mother, an actress who had a modest film career. Field had a complicated relationship with her mother growing up, made more so when her mother married an actor/stuntman, Jock Mahoney. Mahoney sexually abused Sally at a young age, and that relationship resonated with her for the rest of her life.

As Mahoney’s Hollywood fortunes waned, Sally’s interest in acting earned her a starring role in the 1960s sitcom “Gidget.” It was a good first experience, but her second television show, “The Flying Nun,” was a deeply unhappy one.

She didn’t want to do it, but Jock convinced her that she may never work again and she needed to take the job. After a few desperately unfulfilling years there, she was introduced to the Actors Studio, where she came alive. She studied and worked hard to become a serious actress.

Field details the highs and lows in her personal and professional life, from her marriage at a young age and subsequent divorce to raising her three sons and working to get the kind of serious roles she wanted.

From her breakout role as a severely mentally ill woman in “Sybil” to her Academy Award-winning performance in “Norma Rae” to her very complicated relationship with actor Burt Reynolds, Field lays it all on the line in an honest portrait of her life.

Although her mother had a drinking problem as Sally grew up, it was her mother she turned to when she needed someone to care for her sons when she worked. And her mother was there for her and her sons at every turn.

She ends the book trying to understand her mother, what drove her and why they had such a complicated relationship. In Pieces is an indelible portrait of a woman we all thought we knew.

Barbara Kingsolver has written some of the best books of the past 30 years, most notably The Poisonwood Bible. She writes about big issues as illuminated by her brilliantly conceived characters.

Her latest, Unsheltered, tells a story that many people can relate to today. Willa Knox is a middle-aged mother of two grown children, happily married to Iano, a college professor she has loved forever.

When Iano’s college closes, they are forced to move to New Jersey, where Iano found a one-year teaching position at a small college. His very ill father, Nick, lives with them, a man who loves cable news and talk radio and loudly, and profanely blames anyone different from himself for the woes of the country.

Soon their son Zeke arrives with a new baby in tow, progressive daughter Tig comes home after two years incommunicado, and life becomes more difficult, made even more so by the fact that the home left to Willa by her aunt is literally falling down around them.

Willa lost her job when the magazine she wrote for folded, and money is tight. She discovers that their home may have historical classification, and she begins to research the previous owners in hopes of saving it, and them.

Thatcher Greenwood was a science professor who lived in the home after the Civil War. He believed in the work of Charles Darwin, which caused him trouble with his own family and the townspeople of Vineland. People believed Darwin's science was sacrilegious, and it frightened them.

Kingsolver writes brilliantly and beautifully in a novel that touches the reader emotionally and rationally. Her characters feel like real people (and some of the historic ones are), and the relationships between them (especially Iano and Willa) are moving. She really nails the family dynamic, especially in times like these when it can be problematic.